Posted on 07/15/2004 6:19:30 AM PDT by Rutles4Ever
A WWS Exclusive Article
Note from the Editors: You are about to read an account of what happened during a domestic flight that one of our writers, Annie Jacobsen, took from Detroit to Los Angeles. The WWS Editorial Team debated long and hard about how to handle this information and ultimately we decided it was something that should be shared. What does it have to do with finances? Nothing, and everything. Here is Annie's story.
On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young son. Also on our flight were 14 Middle Eastern men between the ages of approximately 20 and 50 years old. What I experienced during that flight has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats.
On that Tuesday, our journey began uneventfully. Starting out that morning in Providence, Rhode Island, we went through security screening, flew to Detroit, and passed the time waiting for our connecting flight to Los Angeles by shopping at the airport stores and eating lunch at an airport diner. With no second security check required in Detroit we headed to our gate and waited for the pre-boarding announcement. Standing near us, also waiting to pre-board, was a group of six Middle Eastern men. They were carrying blue passports with Arabic writing. Two men wore tracksuits with Arabic writing across the back. Two carried musical instrument cases thin, flat, 18" long. One wore a yellow T-shirt and held a McDonald's bag. And the sixth man had a bad leg -- he wore an orthopedic shoe and limped. When the pre-boarding announcement was made, we handed our tickets to the Northwest Airlines agent, and walked down the jetway with the group of men directly behind us.
My four-year-old son was determined to wheel his carry-on bag himself, so I turned to the men behind me and said, "You go ahead, this could be awhile." "No, you go ahead," one of the men replied. He smiled pleasantly and extended his arm for me to pass. He was young, maybe late 20's and had a goatee. I thanked him and we boarded the plan.
Once on the plane, we took our seats in coach (seats 17A, 17B and 17C). The man with the yellow shirt and the McDonald's bag sat across the aisle from us (in seat 17E). The pleasant man with the goatee sat a few rows back and across the aisle from us (in seat 21E). The rest of the men were seated throughout the plane, and several made their way to the back.
(Excerpt) Read more at womenswallstreet.com ...
There has already been a pretty credible rebuke and debunking of this particular story posted yesterday on FR under the title AIR MARSHALS SAY PASSENGER OVER REACTED (NW Flight) from a story by Eric Leonard , KFI News. Read it, put your mind to rest. All the men checked out as legitimate musicians going to a gig in Vegas, I think it was, and they were not on any list, had already booked lodging in the area they were to play,etc. etc. --anyway the article quite convincingly deflates all the understandable paranoia that Annie Jacobsen allowed to take over her mind.
That is, of course, strictly your business.
9-11 made most of us suspicious of arabs boarding planes as they occasionally take over the aircraft and kill everyone on board, plus thousands in buildings. Their behavior in the air exceeds oafish.
Nobody stopped the 13 Syrians from boarding with those out-of-date visas. The federal agents involved all along the route, did not stop the 13 Syrians.
ping
Even more "scary" is the fact that the visiting muja band were traveling on expired visas. The INS has no idea where these men are now.
If you read the link to the Washington Times article - clue: it's located two posts above yours - you can find the reason why "the INS has no idea where these men are now" - every one of them left the United States between July 10 and July 20. The INS isn't supposed to keep a track of people once they've left the country. Musicians came. Musicians played. Musicians left. It just keeps getting scarier all the time, doesn't it?
Well, it's been un-debunked now.
See Jacobsen's latest article.
And where might Jacobsen's latest article be? This thread in NINE months old...I barely recognized it when I saw the title.....how did it come to your attention after all that tim? I really would be interested in reading it and/or getting an update. Thanks.
BTT
New thread is here, willyboy:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1390369/posts
...reveals that Mohammed Atta was on the James Woods "trial run" flight, amongst other scary news...
Bttt.
The only fear I live in is our government will NOT take the terrorists seriously, as proven by their refusal to tell the ACLU and others to stick it when it comes to political correctness, and nail these sons of she dogs
BUMP
Jacobsen's "Terror in the Skies" series is here:
http://www.womenswallstreet.com/columns/column.aspx?aid=725
I do believe I'll take your advice BEFORE I read it. Because of your comment, I do believe I can rest assured that this one is going to be an important BUMP! I'll read it in a few...
A quote:
"But complaints about rudeness aren't the reports at issue, and they're certainly not the ones pilots are going to phone home to the TSA. As reported by WomensWallStreet.com, The Washington Times, the Christian Science Monitor and others, there have been a number of recent, suspicious incidents involving groups of Middle Eastern men acting strangely on aircraft -- spending extended amounts of time in the bathroom, trying to access the cockpit by removing bathroom fixtures, videotaping the cockpit, photographing the cabin, suddenly rushing toward the front of the plane and then backing off -- all incidents that deserve the TSA's immediate and real time attention. Kudos to the people who have paid attention to the reports and enacted change. Word on the street (or rather in the air) about this new reporting procedure is optimistic."
From today's WWS:
Excerpt from Terror in the Skies: Why 9/11 Could Happen Again, Spence Publishing
That terrorists want to build bombs in aircraft bathrooms is not news. The tactic dates from at least 1994, when Ramzi Yousef, along with his uncle, Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), set out to blow up eleven or twelve U.S. passenger jets over the Pacific Ocean, simultaneously, by building bombs in the aircrafts' bathrooms. The terrorists
involved in the plot were not to be suicide bombers. Instead, they would each build a bomb on one leg of the eleven or twelve flights, set the bomb's timer for later, and then deplane. If the plan seems overly ambitious, its two masterminds were certainly capable of pulling it off. Ramzi Yousef was the terrorist who tried to bring down the World Trade Center (WTC-1) in 1993 with a truck bomb. Yousef's co-conspirator, KSM, would go on to mastermind the 9/11 attack.
The plot was called Operation Bojinka (bojinka being slang in many Arabic dialects for explosion), and it was Yousef's next big operation after WTC-1. Yousef had been a kind of one-man terrorist show, barely funded and not very well organized. After his success with WTC-1, that changed. Yousef became respected as an international terrorist. The U.S. government wanted him so badly that they put a $2 million bounty on his head and air-dropped 32,000 matchbooks with Yousef's photo on them in rural Pakistan, hoping to find him. Yousef was able to evade authorities as he traveled extensively throughout South East Asia. He was now funded by his wealthy uncle, KSM, as well as his uncle's wealthy business partner, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, -- Osama Bin Laden's brother in law.
It would be a good thing if air marshals could marshall support to implement martial law when appropriate.
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